“Did you get what you came for?” Myron Teevish asks as he and the young lady walk quickly, but nonchalantly, through the hallways of DiGriz Station.
“Yuppers; this is really going to help the kids out.”
Melvin knew that the woman, well, girl really, was going to be trouble from the moment she walked into the saloon. Diamond City is the not the sort of place a person walks around in wearing short shorts, a white tank top, and a pair of rattlesnake boots topped off with a white and black cowhide patterned cowboy hat, but that's what she did.
She called herself Melis, and started crowing about how she was going to save the universe, and all she needed was a good fighter pilot. Now Myron couldn't rightly tell you if he was bored and lonely, or perhaps just dumb and horny, but he was between escort jobs at the moment, and the idea of spending some time with a pretty young girl seemed a lot more attractive than spending time with drunken miners and spacers on that dust ball of a planet.
As if sensing his interest, Melis turned to look at Myron. The moment her bright blue eyes locked on his, he was done for. He stood up and volunteered his services.
Melis explained how she was going to steal some data from a non-networked system on board DiGriz Station. Myron, like most people in the universe, knew that DiGriz was a front for the Crimson Eye crime syndicate, and people who want to stay healthy generally do not get involved with them, but Melis laid on a sob story about how it was medical data that could help a lot of sick kids.
She spewed a whole bunch of medical-sounding mumbo jumbo at Myron, and while it all sounded plausible, he remained skeptical. Melis, however, could be very persuasive, and that is why the pair of them are now making their way back to the station's docking level with a datapod full of stolen information.
“They know,” Myron says, looking suspiciously at the other people in the wide thoroughfare.
“They don't know. It's going to be hours before anyone else tries to access that computer; I spent a long time figuring out their schedules.”
“And what if someone breaks the schedule?”
“Hey,” shouts a man in a black suit; the suit looks too tight against his muscled arms, “You two, stop!”
“Then we run,” Melis says, before bolting.
Alarms sound as the two run from the ever increasing number of Crimson Eye members. Seeing the commotion, most people press themselves against the walls, not wanting to be involved, even accidentally.
As Melis and Myron near the open doors to the dock, a pair of Crimson Eyes step out in front of them. Melis does not slow down, but barrels into the man. Not expecting this move, the mafioso is knocked off of his feet, and the young woman staggers, but regains her balance and continues running towards her ship.
Myron, being no stranger to fight, puts his shoulder low and forward, and slams into the mobster blocking his path like a runaway freighter, throwing the man up and over him without much more than slowing down from the impact
Melis' ship looks like a normal Adams Evader, a light, maneuverable little hauler, but Myron knows that its normal exterior hides a heavily modified craft; one that flies more like a fighter than a freighter.
Melis signals the ship to unseal with her datapod, and leaps through the hatch while it is still opening. Myron follows, banging his right shoulder hard on the still protruding door.
“Get us started up,” Melis orders, sounding a lot older than she looks suddenly.
Myron moves through to the cockpit, and drops into his seat. The controls light up as he begins to rush through the pre-flight sequence. On the monitors he can see black-suited Crimson Eye muscle surrounding the ship. They are carrying guns, and some of them look powerful enough to blast their way through the ship's hull if they could actually be fired in this area.
“Weapons lock is on, shields are up, and the doors are sealed,” Myron announces, “It's not going to take them long to get a cutter over here and open us up like a pot of instant noodles!”
“Just get us moving, I've got this,” Melis says as she comes into the cockpit and drops into the co-pilot's seat. She begins working her datapod, “Okay, we're good.”
Myron lifts off from the floor of the dock, and slowly maneuvers forward onto the landing strip. Through the front monitors he can see the faint green glow of the atmospheric retaining field and the thick sealed door beyond it. As he looks from screen to screen he sees the weapons lock deactivate, followed by the station's environmental fields, and shielding, “The doors are still shut!”
“Open them, This girl can do it.”
“Alright, strap in.”
Myron fires the ship's main weapons. On a stock Adams Evader these would only scorch the outside of the thick doors, maybe melt an inch of them, but on Melis' craft the guns rip through the doors like they were made of paper. The ship shudders as the oxygen suddenly blows out into space, taking the mobsters with it along with a lot of tools, crates, and pretty much anything else not locked down.
With a flash, the Evader's engines fire, and the little ship rockets out into space.
Melis laughs, “We did it! We got away!”
“Not yet we haven't”
The small ship wheels around in space, and heads back towards the torn metal square in the side of the space station.
“What are you doing?” Melis cries, clutching her seat's armrests.
“Making sure we're not followed.”
“No, we're going to crash!”
Myron guides the Evader back through the hole, and opens fire, tearing large glowing holes in the landing strip's surface. At the angle he's flying, the back of the Evader scrapes along the ceiling of the landing bay, something that would make a horrendous noise if the dock was pressurized.
As he approaches the other end of the landing bay, Myron corrects the angle of the craft, and fires at the sealed hatch. The ship flies through the torn and melting metal hole and back into space.
“Feec!” Melis screams, almost hysterical, “You're crazy!”
“You wanted a good pilot; a good pilot avoids a fight whenever possible.”
“We could have been killed.”
“We just stole something from the mob, we may still be killed if you left any trace of our identities behind.”
“No,” Melis looks down at her datapod, “right about now their entire security system is re-writing itself. They aren't going to have any security footage of us or anyone else.
“Then I guess it's just smooth sailing back to Prosper. I'm going to go take a nap; wake me if anything exciting happens,”
“Wait, what?”
“It doesn't look like anyone's following us, and they're not going to be launching anyone after us for a while, so I'm going to go lay down.”
Myron dreams of he and Melis having a private celebration in a hotel room on Prosper. They are together in bed, and he is rounding the bases when the whole building begins to shake violently. The world spins, and Myron awakens to find himself on the floor in the back of Melis' ship, which is rattling violently around him.
“Melis, what's going on?” Myron yells as he scrambles towards the cockpit. His head aches, and his mind feels foggy. He stops when he sees Melis standing before the airlock with an envirosuit most of the way on. In her left hand she holds the suit's helmet, in the right she holds an energy pistol; at her feet lies a parachute pack, “Melis?”
“Damn it, I was afraid I hadn't given you enough. I was hoping you would sleep through the crash.”
“What? Where are we? How long was I asleep?”
“We're at Prosper; you've been out for about four days.”
“What are you doing?”
“I'm getting away with this. Once we've finished atmospheric entry, I'm going to be leaving, and you'll ride the ship the rest of the way to the ground.”
Myron takes a cautious step forward, keeping his hands up and palms open, “Why are you doing this?”
“Did you really think I could take out the entire security system of a space station from my datapod? I'm good, but not that good. They're going to come after us, and when they do they will find that this ship crashed on re-entry; no one could have survived it.”
Myron takes another step, “There are no children, are there? No medical breakthrough that will save lives?”
“Well, the data will greatly benefit my kids, when I have some. The data I stole is going to make me rich. It'll certainly save my life; save it from ever having to be wasted on work again.”
“So you used me?” Myron asks, taking another step.
“Keep your distance, pops,” she motions at him with the gun.
“You don't have to do this. We can work this out so we both walk away, maybe even go with those plans we made,” Myron takes another step.
“I played you, old man, get ov-”
Myron lunges forward, grabbing for the blaster with his right hand.
Melis pulls the trigger, and Myron hears the air sizzle next to his ear as he slams her arm into airlock door. He brings his left fist up into the young woman's face, and can hear her nose break with the impact.
As blood starts to flow down Melis' face, Myron grabs her short, silky hair, and rams her face into the airlock, once, twice, three times; leaving a smear of blood against the metal.
“You forget that age comes with experience, young lady,” Myron says, releasing his grip on her arm, and opening the inner airlock door.
Myron shoves the girl into the airlock headfirst. She staggers into the outer door, and he closes the inner one behind her, sealing her in, and then locks it.
This ship's shuddering evens out as it passes fully into the planet's atmosphere, and everything goes silent as the engines cut out, leaving the ship in free fall.
Melis' head clears, and she begins pounding on the small window set into the airlock door with her helmet, cursing him.
Myron doesn't say anything, he merely bends down and picks up the parachute pack, holding it up so Melis can see it. The girl's eyes go wide with realization.
“Myron, I'm sorry, you're right, we can work this out,” she pleads; rage being replaced by fear.
“Try flapping your arms,” Myron says, reaching slowly for the airlock controls.
The last Myron sees of her, she is still trying to put on her helmet, not that it will save her from the impact. He leaves her to her fate as she is sucked out into the thin air of the upper atmosphere.
Myron rushes to the bridge and finds that the controls are all locked. Realizing he has little time before he too slams into the ground at terminal velocity, he tries the one thing no pilot ever does in atmosphere; he shuts the ship down completely, reboots it, and prays that this will work.
The landing is rough, but Myron manages to pull it off without too much damage to the ship.
Alive, but alone, Myron sits in the empty ship. He thinks about how lucky he still is to be alive, and while he may have lost the girl and the data, he has a ship that he can sell for parts (except the guns, he's keeping those), and he got out alive. In Myron Teevish's book, any conflict you walk away from is a victory.